There is no capacity limited buffer in the Murdock (1962) free recall data.

Theories of short term memory often include a limited capacity "buffer". Such a buffer contains items which do not decay at all but are overwritten by new data. I show that one of the experiments that fueled the buffer concept, the free recall experiments by Murdock (J Exp Psychol 64(5):482-488, 1962), does not contain such a buffer.